From day one as a student in the UBC Graduate School of Journalism, Vancouver will be your training ground. In your first class, the year-long fundamentals course Integrated Journalism, you’ll choose an area of the city as your “beat,” where you will walk the streets, attend community events and establish trusted sources in order to write stories, many of which will be published on TheThunderbird.ca, the school’s award-winning online news service. Your assignment topics will range from headline news, such as civic elections and the Olympic Games, to ongoing big-picture issues such as environmental conservation, immigration and housing.

In Advanced Video Reporting, students strengthen their video storytelling and reporting skills by producing short documentaries that showcase issues unique to Vancouver and the surrounding area. “Art as a Means of Survival” reported on Gachet, an art gallery in the city’s Downtown Eastside that has played a key role in the lives of nearby residents battling mental illness but whose existence is being threatened by new housing developments. Not everyone in Vancouver can afford to live in traditional, single-family housing, however. Some are choosing cooperatives, with a focus on sustainability, as documented in “Live Collective,” while “Mobile Living” tells the story of a woman who has chosen to live in her RV. Students leave the class equipped with enhanced narrative storytelling techniques, a finished video project and the ability to shoot and edit video projects on their own.